DEL MAR, Calif. – Let’s Go Cheyenne won her stakes debut in Friday’s $88,500 CTT and TOC Handicap at Del Mar, giving trainer Vladimir Cerin an excuse to make big plans for the 4-year-old filly this fall.
Cerin said that Let’s Go Cheyenne will be pointed for the $250,000 Rodeo Drive Stakes at Santa Anita on Sept. 29. The Grade 1 Rodeo Drive, formerly known as the Yellow Ribbon Stakes, is run over 1 1/4 miles on turf for fillies and mares.
“I wish it was farther,” Cerin said.
Talented sprinter Ancient Rome, a two-time stakes winner, challenges older horses for the first time in Monday’s $50,000 feature at Parx Racing.
The Tony Dutrow-trained Ancient Rome is one of two 3-year-olds among seven sprinters going six furlongs in a third-level optional $40,000 claimer that goes as the ninth race.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Trainer Rick Violette looks to continue his successful Saratoga season when he sends out top contenders in both of Monday’s $100,000 stakes restricted to New York-breds.
In the Saratoga Dew, for fillies and mares at 1 1/8 miles, Violette starts the 124-pound highweight, Opus A, against six rivals. Earlier on the 10-race card, Violette will saddle Effie Trinket against five other statebred 2-year-old fillies in the Aristie at six furlongs.
DEL MAR, Calif. - Let’s Go Cheyenne won her stakes debut in Friday’s $88,500 California Thoroughbred Trainers and Thoroughbred Owners of California Handicap, leading throughout the turf marathon for fillies and mares at Del Mar.
Ridden by a confident Joe Talamo, Let’s Go Cheyenne ($8.80) led by as many as 12 lengths and was never threatened, winning by 5 3/4 lengths over Left a Message, the 5-2 favorite. Thisismystage, a 5-2 shot, was third in the field of seven.
[Complete coverage of racing at Del Mar: News, PPs, and video]
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Charles Lopresti wasn’t looking for anything special when he brought Wise Dan over to the Oklahoma turf course Friday morning for his first workout since his victory in the Grade 2 Fourstardave Handicap.
What the trainer saw made not only him, but also the other people who watched the breeze shake their heads in disbelief.
[Complete coverage of racing at Saratoga: News, PPs, and video]
Poseidon’s Warrior’s neck victory over Justin Phillip at odds of 36-1 in the Grade 1 Vanderbilt here at Saratoga earlier in the meet obviously came as a major surprise to a lot of people. So too did what happened at the end of Poseidon’s Warrior’s routine half-mile workout here on Friday.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Executiveprivilege, unbeaten in three starts, can solidify her role as the leading 2-year-old filly in California when she makes her Grade 1 debut in the $300,000 Del Mar Debutante on Sept. 1.
Friday, trainer Bob Baffert said that Executiveprivilege was fit and ready for the seven-furlong Debutante, the summertime championship for the division. Executiveprivilege has started once at this meeting, winning the Grade 3 Sorrento Stakes on Aug. 8.
“The Sorrento was a big race,” Baffert said. “She’s holding her form. She worked nicely the other day.”
A $100,000 win bet made and then canceled within seconds of the start of the sixth race at Emerald Downs on Thursday night created havoc in the race’s betting pools when other bettors placed tens of thousands of dollars in wagers against the horse but did not have time to cancel their own bets.
Gantry, the Louisiana-based runner being pointed for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, has had a quiet month and a half since winning the Grade 2, $400,000 Smile Sprint Handicap at Calder Race Course. But he made some noise last weekend, when he worked a bullet five furlongs in his first drill since the Florida start. And this coming Saturday, Sept. 1, he is scheduled to work again while his connections debate his prep options for the BC Sprint, a Grade 1, $1.5 million race to be run at Santa Anita on Nov. 3.
